Who We Are

Ryan Pearson

Co-Founder & CEO

Through leveraging his background in polymer chemistry, Ryan has led the team in the development and market application of Cypris’ selectively reflective, paintable coatings spanning commodity and high-performance markets. Pearson’s entrepreneurial drive is rooted in his commitment to green chemistry and desire to translate fundamental research into commercial technologies.  In 2018, he presented a TEDx talk on Cypris’ paintable reflective coatings and was recently recognized on the Forbes 30 under 30 list in 2020. Ryan is currently a fellow in the Activate Cyclotron Road program. Before co-founding Cypris, Ryan conducted research at the interface of organic synthesis, catalysis, and polymer chemistry while pursuing his bachelor’s degree from Pennsylvania State University and Ph.D. in Chemistry from Colorado State University.

Matthew Ryan

Co-Founder & CTO

Matthew leads the technical development and productization of Cypris’ structural color platform. His broad expertise spanning materials science, synthetic polymer chemistry, and catalysis has enabled Cypris’ rapid ideation-to-product cycle. Over the last four years he has driven innovation around the synthesis, formulation, and deposition of Cypris’ materials. Matthew is an Activate Fellow at Cyclotron Road and has been recognized in Forbes’s 30 under 30 list in 2020. Matthew holds a PhD in Chemistry from Colorado State University, and a B.S. in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Alexander Hess

Senior Scientist

Alex earned his DPhil in Chemistry from the University of Oxford where he was appointed an ERC Graduate Research Fellow with a concentration in supramolecular chemistry, self-assembly, and synthetic chemistry. From 2016 to 2019, Dr. Hess held a position as a Research Scientist in the Science and Technology division of IBM Research Almaden in San Jose, CA where he worked on a number of polymer synthesis and scale up, technology transfer and commercialization projects in the areas of coatings and green polymer recycling with numerous joint development partners. In early 2020, he made the move to Cypris Materials, Inc. to scale up production, develop quality control measures, and help translate the technology to new application areas for Cypris’ structural color technology.

Luke Whitson

Materials Engineer

Luke holds a B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Utah and brings experience in organic materials. Prior to joining Cypris Materials, Luke worked as a material engineer for Northrop Grumman and SRI International where he focused on the development of aerospace and optical coatings. Since joining in 2020, Luke has led the formulation and application efforts including design of experiments-based analysis, application methods, quality control, and market-specific productization.

Raymond Weitekamp

Co-Founder

Dr. Weitekamp is an experienced entrepreneur, founding polySpectra and co-founding Cypris Materials. He received his PhD in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 2015, where he developed new materials chemistry and simulated the reflective properties of photonic crystals. He brings his knowledge of photonic crystals, deep tech network, and long-term vision in translating academic discoveries into commercial products to the team. Raymond curates PhDtoCEO.com, a website dedicated to helping scientists’ transition into entrepreneurship as well as Invent.FM, a podcast with the dream of creating a global community of inventors worldwide. He was recognized on the Forbes 30 under 30 list in 2017.

Robert Grubbs

Co-Founder

Dr. Grubbs is the 2005 Nobel Laureate in chemistry for his development of the olefin metathesis reaction in organic synthesis, which has been used for a myriad of applications including precision polymer synthesis via ring opening metathesis polymerization. In 2009, his research group discovered the first rapidly self-assembling brush block copolymer based photonic crystals which provided the foundation to Cypris’ technology. Amongst other commercialization efforts, his scientific contributions led to the founding of Materia, Inc. which initially commercialized the Ruthenium based “Grubbs” catalyst used to produce Cypris’ materials.

Garret Miyake

Co-Founder

Dr. Miyake earned his PhD in polymer chemistry from Colorado State University under Eugene Chen, and later moved to the California Institute of Technology to perform his post-doctoral studies under Robert Grubbs. During his post-doc he worked extensively on developing the core science that enables Cypris’s technology. He started his independent career as an assistant professor in 2014. In 2015, he received funding as the lead PI on the ARPA-E grant “Paintable Heat-Reflective Coatings for Low-Cost Energy Efficient Windows” which laid the basis to Cypris Materials’ core technology.

Lila Taylor

Advisor

Lila works closely with hundreds of early and mid-stage tech and biotech companies every year in her role as head of the Presenter Selection Committee for the Biotech Showcase, Digital Medicine & MedTech Showcase and Seed Showcase as well as being on the selection committee for Health Tech Capital and the due diligence team for the Portfolia Active Aging & Longevity Fund. As Chief Business Officer of Demy-Colton, Lila builds relationships with biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, industry stakeholders, and venture capitalists to shape innovative conferences worldwide, and continues to seek out the most promising tech and biotech companies from around the world to present at investor and partnering events.

Support